In head imaging, subject rigid body motion occurs in 3-dimensions (“3D”) with both in-plane motion and through-plane motion relative to the slice/slab excited for a MRI scan. For example, in a 2D multi-slice axial or transverse scan, subjects will answer questions affirmatively with a nod which is primarily a through-plane rotation around the left-right axis. A shaking of the head from side to side as a gesture for a negative answer to a question is a rotational motion mainly within the axial imaging plane, but also includes some through-plane aspects. Correction for through-plane motion can occur retrospectively or prospectively. Retrospective techniques such as PROPELLER (periodically rotated overlapping parallel lines with enhanced reconstruction) do not correct for through-plane motion in 2-dimensional (“2D”) multi-slice imaging due to the inconsistent imaging volume. One category of prospective techniques employs additional hardware, which requires setup and calibration that prolong the overall scan time. A second category of prospective techniques employ a navigator module with an additional radio frequency (RF) excitation, which is susceptible to interference from the RF excitation of the imaging sequence.